Abstract

This paper assesses gender differences in academic self-concept for a cohort of children born in 1958 (the National Child Development Study). We address the question of whether attending single-sex or co-educational schools affected students’ perceptions of their own academic abilities (academic self-concept). Academic selfconcept was found to be highly gendered, even controlling for prior test scores. Boys had higher self-concepts in maths and science, and girls in English. Single-sex schooling reduced the gender gap in self-concept, while selective schooling was linked to lower academic self-concept overall.

Item Type:

Article

Additional Information:

This paper assesses gender differences in academic self-concept for a cohort of children born in 1958. The paper exploits a large, complex longitudinal dataset (the National Child Development Study). Using this dataset, we were able to assess questions regarding the effects of single-sex schooling in an unusually rigorous way. First because a relatively large number of cohort members attended single-sex schools (and this was not restricted to particular social groups) as compared to contemporary samples where single-sex schooling tends to be so restricted that it is hard to compare like with like. And second because we were able to exploit extremely rich information on the sample. Therefore, the paper makes an exceptionally rigorous contribution to the literature on single-sex schooling. Questions regarding gender and single-sex schooling are of continuing policy relevence and great public interest. In this paper we draw on the psychological literature on 'self-concept' - meaning what people think about their own academic abilities in different domains, in order to contribute to the understanding of how institutional contexts can influence gender norms. The intellectual contribution made by this paper is therefore of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary interest. This work was carried out as part of an ESRC funded project which attracted considerable media coverage and was graded by ESRC as outstanding. This is an electronic version of an article published in Sullivan, Alice (2009) Academic self-concept, gender and single-sex schooling. British Educational Research Journal, 35 (2). pp. 259-288. British Educational Research Journal is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411920802042960